Sarah Palin: "We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If there's one part of Canada that's right for Sarah Palin, it's Alberta, our embarrassing bastion of right-wing insanity and one-party Conservative rule. It's hardly a surprise that she was welcomed so enthusiastically in Calgary on Saturday.

As she explained to the "sold-out, largely adoring crowd," though, she actually found a lot to like in Canada when she was younger:

We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn't that ironic?

Uh, yeah, that's one way to put it. She used to take advantage of what we had to offer, when she needed it, but now she's a right-wing extremist railing against "socialism." Hilarious.

And, let us remember, there she was, just last November, attacking our health-care system, one of the best things about this country, and calling for it to be reformed, with "the private sector" taking over.

It's like when Dear Leader Rush -- Limbaugh, that is -- recently received treatment in Hawaii, which has the most progressive health-care system in America. Upon leaving the hospital, he praised it as "the best that the world has to offer." Later, upon realizing that the truth didn't fit his anti-reform narrative, he attacked Obama, and implicitly Hawaii's health-care system, and exposed himself once more as a moral and intellectual fraud.

Did Palin not do pretty much the same thing, if less blatantly and with her characteristic twinkle of charm and stupidity, Saturday night?

Basically, what Palin said speaks to what's so wrong with American health care. If you've got money, lots of it, it's great. You can buy some of the very best treatment in the world. There are great doctors, great clinics, great hospitals, great medical schools, great research facilities, etc. But if you're not rich or otherwise don't have access to the best the system has to offer, that is, if you're like the vast majority of Americans, millions and millions of whom don't have any insurance coverage at all, you're screwed. There may be a market and there may be "choice," and those who can buy what they want may ramble on endlessly about freedom and liberty and the evils of socialism, which they don't understand, but you, you're pretty much at the mercy of a profit-oriented system that is anything but merciful.

And so maybe, if you can, like Sarah Palin, you "hustle over the border" into Canada, where we treat people like human beings, where there's a civilized and decent and just and fair system that doesn't neglect the plight of millions. Or maybe you go to Hawaii. Or maybe even to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts.

Obviously, Sarah Palin is too dim to have learned anything even from her own life experiences.